


Backwaters and Boardwalks

by Spudato



Series: Lesbian Skater Squad AU [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Multi, Skateboarding AU, lesbian skater squad, queer writing by a queer writer for queer readers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 15:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17551865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spudato/pseuds/Spudato
Summary: Weiss feels like she should have been trying for something much more impressive to warrant the cracking and splintering of seven-ply wood beneath her feet. Yet, once Weiss rolls to a stop, her hips aching from taking the brunt of the fall, there’s only applause, Reese’s voice shouting and cheering as if Weiss had landed exactly as planned.“You did it! You broke your first board!”After snapping her first skateboard, Weiss is taken to a magical skater emporium that sells just about everything with wheels, and also some things that don't: Xiao Long's Surf and Skate. It should be a small and inconsequential thing, but like most of the things she's encountered in Vale so far, it really isn't.





	Backwaters and Boardwalks

**Author's Note:**

> i have been sitting on this fic since LITERALLY NOVEMBER but im rly glad its just Done Now. theres still a few bits im ~vague hand wave~ on, but at least it's vaguely polished!!! anyway. more lesbian skater squad and aurora boardealis for yr soul...

Weiss breaks her first board by jumping down a five-stair.

There isn’t even a proper trick or anything involved; it’s just a straight ollie off the top and down onto smooth concrete below, and Weiss feels like she should have been trying for something _much_ more impressive to warrant the cracking and splintering of seven-ply wood beneath her feet. She knows why, though, Ilia’s voice echoing in the far recesses of her mind and telling her to _always land on the bolts of your trucks ‘cause if you plant your feet in the middle it’ll snap like a popsicle stick,_ and as she goes tumbling across the ground with a shout of surprise she already knows she’s gonna get chewed out for her mistake. Once Ilia’s done laughing at her, of course.

Yet, once Weiss rolls to a stop, her hips aching from taking the brunt of the fall, there’s only _applause,_ Reese’s voice shouting and cheering as if Weiss had landed exactly as planned.

“You did it! You broke your first board!”

Groaning, Weiss struggles her way upright, squinting past the late midday sun to where Reese, Ilia, Blake and Velvet are spectating from the sidelines. Blake’s clapping from where they’re perched on the metal barrier that surrounds the park, Velvet sat cross-legged below them, but Reese and Ilia are already jogging towards her, Ilia offering out one browned palm to haul Weiss back onto her feet.

“I told ya,” she says, ruffling Weiss’s hair affectionately. “Gotta keep those feet on the bolts if you don’t wanna eat total shit.”

“I just _knew_ you were going to say that,” Weiss sighs, but she can’t stop her smile when Reese claps her on the back and pulls her into a victorious one-armed hug, a kiss dropped onto her head of white hair. “Although I wasn’t aware that breaking your board was some sort of… rite of passage?”

“Of course is it!” Reese proclaims. “I mean, firstly, it’s always better to break your board than your legs, but like-” She squeezes Weiss’s shoulders as she motions to the wreckage of the board left at the bottom of the stairs; it’s in a bit of a V shape now, split cleanly in half, and if Weiss didn’t have a lingering pain running up and down her body she’d scarcely believe it was her fault at all. After all, as Blake’s pointed out more than once since they met, she hardly weighs more than a particularly soggy blanket. She’d figured that board would last her just about forever. “See? You went fast and committed, and you didn’t hesitate at all; my pops woulda been proud of that one.”

Ilia picks the board up, the wood crunching and the ply splitting as she flexes it this way and that, and she whistles appreciatively as she shows it off to Weiss. “Look at that. You absolutely fuckin’ destroyed it. I mean, it was a pretty cheap piece of shit to begin with so, like, count me unsurprised, but damn.”

There’s a little flicker of pride in Weiss when Ilia says that, and it blooms into a warmth that fills her from head to toe. She did that, all by herself! She’d worked herself into a sweaty mess to finally take on the five-stair, to impress her friends and girlfriends with her improvement, to the extent that she’d made her skateboard almost explode beneath her… and then Weiss deflates all at once when she remembers she doesn’t have a replacement on hand. “Aw. I kinda wanted to do more today, though. You were gonna show me how to drop-in on the big bowl and stuff.”

Blake lopes along, wincing and rubbing at the curve of their butt from being sat on solid metal for as long as they’ve been, and they look the ruins in Ilia’s hands up and down before they reach forwards to tug at a long splinter thoughtfully. “Well, there _is_ a skate store on the boardwalk that me and Velv went to a while back. We bought some insoles from there and, real talk, they’ve got everything under the sun. It’s only like five minutes away.”

“Oh!” Reese chirps with a grin, tugging Weiss in front of her to rest her chin right on the top of her head. “That’s Xiao Long’s place,” she says, and Blake nods in confirmation as if this is something everyone present will understand innately. Weiss and Ilia, though, just share a very Atlesian type of _look_ to communicate very clearly that neither of them have a clue what anyone is on about. Thankfully, Velvet steps up to link arms with Blake and has the good sense to spot this before it can get awkward.

“It’s _Xiao Long’s Surf and Skate_ store. They’ve got everything you could ever want in there, honestly. Skateboards and longboards, shortboards and surfboards, scooters-”

“Heelies, too,” Reese continues. “Uh, Ripstiks and electric boards, electric scooters, even BMX stuff. They’ve got the parts for all of ‘em too, so you can imagine there’s a lot of shit in there. It’s real neat.”

Only half those words really make any sense to Weiss -- who still calls herself a novice at most of this stuff even after a year of skating -- but that’s fine; she brushes fine concrete dust from her clothes, rubs at the sore heels of her palms, and then smiles brightly to her friends. “Alright. To the skater emporium, then?”

* * *

 

 _Xiao Long’s Surf and Skate_ is on the boardwalk, as promised; in fact, it’s slapped down right in the middle of it, sticking out a little more than the other buildings that are lined up alongside so that the crowds have to physically swerve around. It’s emblazoned with a surfboard-shaped sign, the name painted in such a bright neon orange that it’s actually kinda hard to look at it and yet impossible to miss, and from inside plays a chill, ambient sort of music, just audible over the people that walk past outside. It looks a lot like a picturesque beachside shack, in Weiss’s eyes; the wooden sidling is painted blue and white with colourful surfboards hanging off the awning on bits of hemp rope, and in the boxy windows are posters for surf competitions, skate tournaments, giveaways and contests. The door’s left open to let in a cool summer breeze, and on the far end of the store Weiss can just make out the figure of a blonde woman at the counter, paging through some sort of magazine.

Blake’s the one who takes point, strolling inside with the wreckage of Weiss’s deck in one hand as Velvet holds the other, and Reese follows closely behind, Weiss and Ilia left to take up the rear. They share another quick, nervous glance -- they’ve both rapidly discovered that, outside of Solitas, nobody seems to have any sense of apprehension about anything at all -- but they chase after them anyway, the floorboards under their feet creaking as they step over the threshold… before they stop dead in their tracks, jaws dropping at the stark realisation that, if anything, they’d been completely undersold on the reality.

The walls inside are completely loaded with merchandise, brand names layered upon emblems in coatings of bright stickers all over long shelves, and colours mesh and clash and sear the eyes with neon shades. Weiss only has to look around for five seconds before all of the possibilities overwhelm her; there’s displays of skateboard decks in every shape, size and colour under the sun, and above her head hang scooters held aloft from thick, blue-painted girders. Free-standing display islands are lit by with white LEDs and boast bearing sets from every brand Weiss and heard of and then some, whilst from wall-mounted racks hang neoprene wetsuits and t-shirts and helmets and hats. This is all well before she even spots hundreds of boxes of wheels and rows of shiny trucks, and there’s even a neat little display of BMXs, all polished to a showroom sheen. Weiss has to turn around once, twice, three times before she feels she’s even taken in half of what’s on offer, and by that point she bumps right into the back of Reese’s sweat-damp shirt, their little entourage coming to a stop as Blake approaches the counter in front.

“Hey, do you set up boards here? Our friend’s had a crash-landing and she needs a new deck.”

Weiss, for no good reason, can feel her cheeks go pink at that, and she shuffles around Reese with a mumbled apology just in time to see the blonde open her mouth to reply, her smile wide until she spots the remains of Weiss’s deck.

“Oh woah, that’s pretty gnarly. Uh, yeah, we can put a new one together right now if you’ve got a deck picked out already, though!”

Weiss wants to roll her eyes -- who says ‘gnarly’ completely unironically these days? -- but the woman’s got a thick accent that she’s struggling to place until she steps aside for a moment, revealing that pinned up behind her is the flag of Patch, small enough to blend in with tens of posters and photos and stickers but large enough to educate the unaware. As far as Weiss has heard, Patch is a backwater island off the western coast that’s mostly full of bikers, hikers, surfers and runners, the southern end more famous for the presence of the internationally-acclaimed Signal Academy, and with that in mind Weiss is ready to concede that they probably _do_ say ‘gnarly’ there. They also maybe don’t have a proper CCT connection either, but she’s digressing.

“Not yet, but we’ll take a look, thanks.”

“Alright! My sister handles most of the hardware for skateboards and stuff, so lemme just-” She takes in a breath, and before Weiss can even prepare she bellows loudly enough that Weiss can _feel_ it right through the floorboards, Velvet’s long ears dropping right down to try and suppress the sheer volume. _“Ruby!_ Put that butt in gear, kiddo, I need you on the floor!”

A second passes, and from above comes a tiny little _coming!_ that makes Reese snort, but it’s with that that their little group starts to disperse through the store; Blake hangs out by the counter as Reese drags Ilia towards shelves of shoes and wheels alike, and for moment Weiss stands alone, floundering. Well, that’s until Velvet slings a tanned arm about her narrow shoulders, offering her a kind and snaggletoothed smile as she guides her to a solid wooden display of decks.

“Not to, like, dunk you on the spot or whatever,” she starts, squeezing Weiss close. “But you wouldn’t happen to know the size of your board off the tippity-top of your head, right?”

Weiss, in reply, makes a face. She’s not sure what sort of face it is, but it’s certainly _A Face_ and it’s enough to make Velvet laugh as she tries to actually explain herself. “I don’t, uh… honestly, Ilia picked it out for me. It was a complete we found online, but I don’t actually know much else about it.”

“I think it was an eight-inch,” Ilia chimes in from across the store, working a well-bitten nail between her teeth as she checks out a pair of charcoal grey shoes. “But honestly, I think maybe seven, seven and a half would be better?”

“Oh, for sure,” the blonde adds cheerfully. “The smaller your shoe size, the smaller the deck, generally speaking. You wear… what, fives?”

The way she says it is softened up, like she already knows that she’s wrong but doesn’t want to make Weiss feel tinier than she already is, overestimating to soothe her ego. It’s a sweet gesture, but thankfully Weiss has already come to terms with the fact she’ll never hit the five-foot mark she’d once dreamt of. Alas. “Fours, actually.”

She can probably tell Weiss isn’t offended by the accompaniment of a loose shrug, and so she doesn’t launch into any apologetic spiel about her mistake and just grins broadly instead, her eyes a funny shade of blue that’s almost lilac, freckles scattered across her face. “Yeah, I’d say a seven and a half is probably gonna be more your pace, then. I mean, you can go smaller than that, but then I’d have to direct you to the kiddie corner and nobody wants to get told that. Not even the _kids.”_

Part of Weiss thinks she should, maybe, be offended at that. Once, it would’ve been her go-to response, putting on an overly shrill voice with a heavier Atlesian accent to really exaggerate the sharper syllables, but instead she ends up smiling. Everything about this store is friendly and oddly comforting, and Weiss can’t seem to find it in her to make a snarky joke. Instead, she’s about to try and say something clever -- she’s not sure exactly what, but clever all the same -- when from around the corner comes a second girl, carrying plastic-wrapped boards underneath one arm as she glides behind the counter on heelies. On _heelies._ Weiss has already seen it all and it hasn’t even been five minutes yet.

“Did someone ask for seven and a half? Because, _hah,_ we literally got these in _yesterday-_ Yang, move your whole butt, geez-”

Yang steps out of the way, Weiss silently but eternally grateful to have a name for the face, and the aforementioned Ruby makes her way over with a grin that’s almost a carbon copy of Yang’s, wheels clacking against the gaps between the floorboards. Her hair is dark and skin paler than Yang’s -- though nowhere near as pale as Weiss herself -- and honestly if Yang hadn’t already told them that Ruby was her sister, it’d be hard to pin them down as sharing blood at all if not for the smile and the similar demeanour. Not that it’s Weiss’s place to make any sort of commentary; her family’s also a bit of a mess with that stuff, since despite all of them looking alike, nothing about their personalities align at all. Weird.

“We don’t stock a ton of these, actually,” Ruby comments as she comes to a stop, red headphones about her neck blasting out a distant beat, and Weiss has to crane her neck up to look her in the eyes. That’s another thing that marks them as sisters: they’re both pretty tall. “Seven seventy-fives, sure, and the eights fly off the shelves faster than I can put ‘em up there, honestly.”

There’s a rhythmic _thunk_ of wood on wood as Ruby slots the decks into the lower shelf of the display, _7.5_ written upon small circular stickers that adhere to the clear wrap, but one of the new decks in particular catches Weiss’s eye. It’s mostly a pure sky-blue shade with white ink outlining the illustration of two turntables, and on each vinyl disc is written _external impact_ in dark, navy-blue letters. It’s a brand name Weiss recognises from her trawls on skate stores online, a variety of decks and wheels and merchandise under their name, and she’s drawn to it right away. Ruby’s barely put it down before she reaches over, lifting it up at one end to get a better look.

“Oh?” Ruby says, spotting her interest. “That one, huh? It’s nice; they make loads of really, like, colourful decks, and they’re not too… overly pretty, I guess?”

“She’s saying that because she once bought a deck that looked like it was made out of marble,” Yang interrupts dryly, “and she couldn’t bear to ruin it. She ended up having to mount it to the wall without ever riding it.”

As Yang speaks, Ruby’s squeezed her eyes shut, as if she’s physically pained by the admission and is waiting for the worst of it to pass. Her face goes pink from shoulder to hairline, but to her credit she doesn’t turn around to even look at Yang, as if it’d give her the confirmation she’s looking for. _“Anyway!”_ She opens her eyes, but her words come out distinctly grated between her teeth. “How about we pick out some new griptape? I’ll take the old trucks and wheels off your old deck and use those, unless you’re looking to start totally fresh.”

Weiss isn’t and she says so, since she isn’t yet confident enough have caused any lasting damage to those as is, and so Ruby leads her over to a wide shelf where there’s stores of griptape ready for the taking. Some of it is sold in rolls and as a weird sort of a sandpapery tape, but most comes in board-sized sheets, and after a few moments of deliberation Weiss can’t help but be tempted by a sheet that’s striped with black and yellow tape, _CAUTION_ printed in dark bold letters along the length of it. It’s strange to get to choose stuff like this; the complete had been pretty run-of-the-mill, one of the cheapest they could find, but getting to choose a board and patterned griptape is a bit of a novelty.

Ruby takes both of Weiss’s selections in hand before she glides back over towards the counter, the far left side having been left bare save for skate tools and a couple of craft knives. The wreckage has been laid out ready, splinters sticking all about like jagged knives, but Weiss is mostly distracted by the fact Yang’s leaning against the countertop, leaving a prosthetic metal arm on show for the world to see. She hadn’t noticed it when they’d walked in, her brain assuming it was a weird asymmetric sleeve under her orange t-shirt or something, but no; it’s an Atlesian make, not quite cutting edge but recent enough that Weiss can vaguely remember articles about its release, the anchor set halfway up her bicep. The paint job is custom, the usual models left a blank and polished aluminium, and instead the larger panels are a startling yellow whilst the rest is detailed in black and grey. It should have drawn the eye rather than hiding the injury away, but it seems to match with Yang’s personality so well that it doesn’t seem out of place upon her body at all.

She realises she’s starting too intensely and Weiss tries to look away before Yang can spot her observation, but she’s a second too late; Yang winks and raises her arm, flexing it playfully as the prosthetic quietly whirrs away.

“You like it? Painted her myself.”

Weiss nods mutely, Ruby reaching up for a high-five from the metallic arm and cheering when she does. “We call her Ember Celica, although Yang sometimes just calls her Righty.”

“Righty’s never wrongy,” Yang says slowly, like this is a rare piece of wisdom that she rarely grants others, and Ruby nods along as if that’s exactly what it is. The exchange is kinda weird and, to Weiss, really cements that these are the type of sisters who also maybe have telepathy. Probably.

In the time it’s taken to have _that_ whole conversation, though, Weiss realises that Ruby’s already got half of the first truck off, lining up the nuts and bolts in a neat little row. It’s actually a bit of a marvel to watch her work; she has no trouble with the parts at all, unheeding of the splinters as she turns the board this way and that. Weiss once took it apart to get a sense of how it all slotted together once, and it took an hour to reconstruct from memory. Still, it’s weird to let her work in silence, intently watching her hands, so Weiss grabs at the first straw of a topic she can think of. “So, uh… I’ve never heard of this store before. Is it independant?”

“Yeah!” Ruby chirps, and her silver eyes flick up to Weiss before she looks to the rear truck, her black skate tool flipping about in an adept hand. “There’s only two in the whole world, actually. The first one is _Xiao Long’s Surf Store,_ and that’s run by our dad, Taiyang Xiao Long, over on Patch! This _Surf and Skate,_ though, this one’s all ours.”

“So this- so it wasn’t always a skate store?”

“Nah,” Yang pitches in, flipping through her magazine again to show something to Blake. “Surfing’s, like, _huge_ on Patch, but the closest store for it was on the southern coast in Signal. Dad knew people loved the waters on the northern coast, so he opened the first store there. Once he decided to expand here on the mainland, though… well, we kinda realised surfing just isn’t that big here.”

“People tend to travel to Patch for that,” Ruby says with a laugh, Yang agreeing with a murmur.

“Yeah, but we realised there _were_ a ton of skaters ‘n’ stuff hanging out, lots of big names coming to Vale and competitions to boot, so we diversified. Now we’re one of the biggest stores in Vale. Top of the page if you search for skate shops in the city on the CCT network.”

Honestly, Weiss can’t even envision being part of a family that you trust enough to run a business with like this. The Schnee Technology Company may literally have her name on it, and it may have been built by her family’s hands, but most of the employees are nameless and faceless and disposable, rendered down to figures on the quarterly reports of a company now so behemoth it had an identity of its very own. To work so closely with one’s father, to have him trust you enough to leave a brand new investment entirely in your care? To build bonds so tight and rely on each other so wholly that to fall out and disagree would likely bring it all to the ground, yet still having family photos pinned to the back wall for all to see? To Weiss it was utterly, incomprehensibly wild. She could never envision doing anything like this with any of her family.

“Oh, that’s cool,” is all she says instead.

Once that’s all awkwardly said and done, however, Ruby herself is just about finished. The trucks were removed faster than Weiss could have ever imagined, the broken board tossed in the back before the griptape was applied with steady hands to the new deck, craft knife trimming with edge with an almost surgical precision before the sides were sanded flush with the ply. The trucks are reattached -- with a literal drill this time, Yang rolling her eyes at the display -- and the sisters make little jabs at each other between the flow of conversation, jokes and snark traded between them with a good-natured familiarity. It’s with the tightening of the last bolt, though, that Ruby flips the board over, rolling it across the countertop before she’s satisfied.

“There we go! Next time I see this thing, I want it to look like it went through a meat grinder or something.”

That request might take a while, since Weiss is a pretty cautious skater as compared to Ilia and Reese, but she nods her assent anyway, taking it from Ruby’s hands and running her fingers across the pristine print on the underside, the griptape harsh on her palms like unused sandpaper. For a moment she’s a little scared to ruin it, thinking of Ruby’s unused marble deck, but then she hears Ilia’s voice distantly saying _hell yeah time to go ride the big bowl_ and she grins, excitement bubbling up and spreading right down to her toes. “How much do I owe you?”

Ruby grins. “Nothin’.”

That can’t be right. “Th-that can’t be right?”

Something nudges Weiss’s shoulder, and she looks over to see Blake holding up a debit card between two fingers, amber eyes glimmering. “I already paid for you, shortstack. A gift for your first broken board.”

Their act of kindness leaves Weiss completely off-balance, staring agape at the card, then their face, then to Yang, who confirms it by passing over the receipt wrapped about a business card for the store. She reads it once, twice, knows that it’s indeed been paid for in full and yet still can’t quite believe it. It’s not that she didn’t expect her friends do pull stuff like this, but having it actually happen sends her off-kilter. Like she has to instantly make up for it. Her jaw works soundlessly, words slow to organise -- _choose something, anything, and i’ll get that for you_ \-- but by the time her brain’s rebooted and figured out words and sounds and meanings, Velvet’s already tugged Blake into a one-armed cuddle, laughing a kiss against their cheek.

“Blake just _looooooooooves_ to do nice things for their friends, ‘cause they’re a big, gay, secret _sap.”_

“Don’t out me like this,” they grumble, although they press a kiss right against Velvet’s smiling mouth anyway. Behind the counter Ruby pretends to gag as Yang swats at her shoulder, but before Weiss can _still_ think of anything good to say -- some thanks to offer, a promise of retribution -- her sleeve gets tugged at, Ilia pulling at her arms, her shoulders, her waist, to try and get her to follow her out of the store.

“C’mon! You got your board and Blake’s paid for it and the sun is _literally_ setting! We gotta hit up the big bowl!”

She’s right; outside the windows the sky is starting to turn a soft pinkish orange, the crowds beginning to thin out a little as evening sweeps in, but Weiss still ignores Ilia to face Blake again, puffing up her chest and putting on her best pout (which makes Velvet coo adoringly, which really ruins the whole effect). She’s just about to chew them out something hardcore -- look, she’s bad with affection and this really is the best she can manage -- when Yang leans over with a smile, blocking her tirade before it can even start. “Before you go into a whole, like, gay thing, I’d just like to add that the card I gave you is a royalty card! Get ten stamps and your eleventh purchase gets twenty-five percent off on the total, and I’ve already stamped your first.”

The air escapes Weiss in a rush, glancing down to check the card in her hands and- yup, there are nine blank squares awaiting a stamp, the first in the row featuring a smiling face in black ink. It should be something small and inconsequential, but instead Weiss wants to cry. Everyone’s being so nice to her, and she never knows how to handle it! So, instead, she defaults to her usual response, drilled into her by years of Atlesian high society. “Thank you very much. It was lovely to meet you.”

“No problem! I’m Yang, Yang Xiao Long. This is my baby sister, Ruby Xiao Long. Although you probably gathered all that from the sign outside, heh.” Yang offers out the prosthetic hand, although it’s surprisingly warm to the touch when Weiss is led into a firm handshake.

“I’m Weiss, uh, Schnee.”

The way Ruby’s head twitches, gunmetal eyes shining with something that looks like barely suppressed curiosity, implies she’d love nothing more than to ask how in _Remnant_ a Schnee is so far from home and in a _skate store_ of all places, but she glances behind Weiss and relents. It’s probably Ilia looking grumpy as ever that there’s still a delay, but thankfully Yang doesn’t keep her either. “Nice to meet you too, Weiss. Better get scootin’ to that bowl before your little squad carry you out of here, though.”

True to her word, when Weiss glances over her shoulder Reese and Ilia are doing some silly pantomime where they’re pulling on imaginary fishing rods, trying to reel Weiss towards the door. Weiss rolls her eyes and with a long-winded sigh she makes after them, but when Blake and Velvet don’t follow she pauses in her tracks, cocking her head towards them.

“You go on ahead, pipsqueak,” Blake calls, winding an arm about Velvet’s waist and pulling her close. “We’ll tag along in a bit.”

“If you try and do another nice thing for me behind my back, I’ll kick your shins,” is Weiss’s honest reply, because in the end, that’s just the sort of friends they are. She’ll always be bad with their affection, probably, but at least the threat’s out there. “I mean it.”

That causes a laugh from all sides, but Blake just winks. “You couldn't take me on even if you tried, halfpint.”

They’re right -- although she won’t admit it -- but it doesn’t matter that she hasn’t got a retort when Ilia grabs at her arms and tugs her right out of the door, the warm evening sunlight turning a bright and golden amber that catches on the smudged clouds peppered above them. Reese’s laughter still rings out across the street, across the white-sanded beach, and all the way out towards the hazy, distant horizon, where the island of Patch sitting on still, glittering, golden waters.

Everything falls together, and Weiss feels like she’s home.

 


End file.
